Lot 48: JOHN HUNTER (1737-1821)

An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, with the Discoveries which have been made in New South Wales and in the Southern Ocean since the publication of Phillip's Voyage, compiled from the Official Papers; Including the Journals of Governors Phillip and King, and of Lieut. Ball; and the Voyages from the first Sailing of the 'Sirius' in 1787, to the Return of the Ship's Company to England in 1792. London: John Stockdale, 1793. 4° (289 x 230mm). 5 maps, 2 folding, and 12 engraved plates from drawings by the author including portrait and title vignette, list of subscribers, directions to binder. (Imprint partly cropped.) 19th-century roan over marbled boards, spine gilt in compartments and lettered in one (lightly rubbed, some cracking on joints).

FIRST EDITION FIRST FLEET JOURNAL with fine views of Port Jackson -- the earliest published view of Sydney -- and the natives of Duke of York and Lord Howe Islands. One plate is especially notable as being engraved by William Blake -- 'A Family of New South Wales' opposite p. 414. Descriptions of these islands and of Norfolk and Tench Islands, the Isle of Pines and other small islands off Australia must be some of the earliest. Norfolk Island is covered in detail as Hunter was ordered to establish a penal colony and was marooned there for eleven months. He first sailed to Port Jackson as second-in-command of Sirius with the First Fleet in 1788 and succeeded Phillip as Governor of New South Wales. As an experienced navigator he encouraged the exploration of the Australian coastline, and the early discoveries of Flinders and Bass owe much to him. At the end of 1788 he made a remarkable 6-month circumnavigation eastward from Port Jackson to collect a shipment of supplies from Cape Town -- from which he continued east back to Port Jackson. Hunter, like Phillip in his account of Port Jackson, notes the the arrival of La Pérouse shortly before his disappearance in the Pacific. Ferguson 152; Hill 857; Kropelien 620.

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